It’s a victory for masked politicians everywhere! The Great Sasuke just won the right to sit in the Iwate Prefectural Assembly while masked (original). Good on him.

CafePress sez: Books are closer than ever to completion! We are currently running a beta test to make sure that we present the best product possible. As soon as we tally the results and make improvements where necessary, books will go live! For our first release we will be offering the following size and binding combinations. Wire-O binding (like a journal): 4.18” × 6.88” mass trade paperback 5” × 8” tradeback ...

Now, that’s a truck (original).

Yeah, Danny’s pretty serious about running this team. I think it’s kind of sneaking up on us. During the glory years of the 80s, Danny was clearly the least talented starter. Mind you, on a team with Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, and Dennis Johnson that leaves plenty of room to be pretty damned good — and he was — but he was still the least talented starter and in a lot of ways he was the kid on the team. I think that Boston fans, on occasion, have trouble thinking of Danny as a hard-nosed GM. Look at me; I’m still calling him Danny. Everyone does. ...

The Freepers are getting all excited about stuffing the MoveOn ballot box. They’re so cute! Such a fervent belief in the democratic process! Not. But the priceless bit — I gotta quote the whole thing. Here. FOR THE THIRD TIME: This is not a FReeping opportunity - this is lunacy! These people are COMMUNISTS! THINK ABOUT IT …!! DO YOU REALLY WANT YOUR NAME ON A LIST ASSOCIATED WITH A COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION …?? ...

After my RSS rant, I’m glad to see Sam Ruby trying to solve the problem. For what my voice is worth, I support this effort.

Phil Carter mused on the Iyman Faris plea bargain over the weekend, to good effect. He’s dug up a claim that the government threatened to declare Faris an enemy combatant in order to get him to plea bargain. Phil explains why this is bad at length. It goes beyond the immediate fact that someone’s either an enemy combatant or not.

Political junkies might be interested in this news (original). Howard Dean’s 17 year old son was arrested for stealing booze from a local country club today. No big deal; the Senate Majority Leader’s son was just arrested for DUI. Rove’ll try and spin it, though.

Some musicians are peeved about single song sales (original) from the Apple iTunes Music Store. An attorney who works for the firm that represents Will Smith and Alanis Morissette claims it’s an artistic issue. “The fear among artists is that the work of art they put together, the album, will become a thing of the past.” Alas, Yahoo Shopping lists 26 singles from Mr. Smith and another 26 from the divine Ms. Morissette. I’m sure the attorney will be attending to this breach of artistic integrity immediately. ...

Ah, ArsDigita. For a while, Phillip Greenspun (original) was an Internet darling. He did some important work on database driven web sites, which wound up turning into a startup called ArsDigita. ArsDigita was very successful for a little while, and then went boom. Phillip and his former SO Eve Andersson have one perspective. I mention the personal relationship only because it becomes somewhat relevant in the recently posted alternate perspective from Michael Yoon. Yoon’s piece probably ought to be required reading for, I dunno, lots of people. Or perhaps for nobody, since the horse is now far from the barn and frolicking around in the pasture. Way too late to close the barn door now. But — speaking from a biased, management perspective — these three stories in conjunction demonstrate exactly why management is important. ...